


The Businessman and the Bureaucrat

by rillrill



Category: Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation
Genre: Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:59:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3719461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>But Leslie's smile is encouraging, and he's had a glass and a half of wine, and so he takes a deep breath and lays it all out without stopping. His siblings, so much like Frank Baum characters - one without a brain, one without a heart, one without a hand.</i>
</p>
<p> Set post-series for AD, pre-series for Parks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Businessman and the Bureaucrat

**Author's Note:**

> This was written back in 2011 and posted at Livejournal. I just remembered that it existed and pretty much just edited for plot stuff revealed since then. Here it is.

_I believe in love, I'm married to my work._  
— Voxtrot, "Rise Up in the Dirt"

 

**SPRING 2006**

 

What Michael Bluth wants is a brand new life. He wants to start over entirely, grow up in a totally different family, one where his parents are normal people who show emotion and raise average, non-fucked-up kids and nobody goes around being indicted by the federal government constantly. As a child, he used to dream about being an only child with warm, supportive parents who didn't believe in throwing the baby in the pool to teach it to swim. 

He's not going to get a brand new life or a brand new family. So he makes it his prerogative to get as far away from the one he has as possible. 

 

+

 

What Leslie Knope wants is a new job. After years at City Hall, working for the Housing Development department, she's sick of it. Not of government, of course. She loves government. But she wants to be doing more. She wants a job that lets her get out and talk to people, instead of staring at files and papers and numbers and statistics all day.

There's a rumor going around the building that Michael Cooper is leaving the Parks department. Actually, it's not so much a rumor as it is a fact. His retirement party is set for the end of the month and he's already named his deputy director, a man named Ron Swanson who Leslie has somehow never seen before, as his successor. 

Ron Swanson's replacement has yet to be named.

Leslie submits her resume and hopes for the best.

 

+

 

The heartland is booming. At least, that's the buzz in the housing business. In Mexico, Michael is consumed with reports, newspapers, magazines, graphs, bank statements. 

He considers the possibilities. He has control of the company, now that his mother is awaiting trial. He has money of his own, socked away for a rainy day. He has business-school contacts in central Indiana, a state ripe for development. He has no interest in dealing with his siblings again. 

So on an spring morning in 2006, he and George Michael pack the abridged versions of their lives into the new car - a real car, for once - and merge onto the freeway, Indiana-bound. 

 

+

 

"Hi, this is Leslie Knope from the Housing Department. I'm calling to confirm my interview time for the parks position... If you could give me a call back at your earliest convenience, that would be wonderful. Thank you."

She places the phone back on the hook and sighs. A week later, she's not entirely sure that Ron Swanson even exists. The Parks Department has always had a reputation around City Hall as a bit of an inefficient time-suck, but this is ridiculous.

Never mind. She glances over her day planner. Finally, a real meeting, with - Michael Bluth, representative from the Bluth Company. Odd name, she thinks, and quickly types it into AltaVista.

She isn't prepared for the blitz of articles she's immediately hit with. Apparently, the Bluth Company is based in Southern California, specializes in developing, constructing, and selling luxury tract homes at a low cost, and was somehow involved with the Saddam Hussein regime, and when she clicks the "Investors" link at the top of the company website, the page turns up blank but for an embedded video of a man performing small magic tricks around a bleak-looking office. 

This? This is not a Pawnee company. And it's not like Leslie can keep nationwide companies out of Pawnee, but she _wants_ to; she wants to preserve the town she grew up in and keep it from becoming a wasteland of McMansions.

So when Intern Brett knocks on her door and goes, in his eager, chipper little college-kid voice, "Michael Bluth is here to see you," she almost crawls underneath her desk and tells Brett to say that she's fallen ill. But Leslie Knope is a grown-ass woman and as much as she dislikes what the Bluth Company stands for, she is going to deal with this man - probably old and gross, like the founder pictured on the website - gracefully.

 

+

 

Michael isn't prepared for the woman he's meeting from the Pawnee Housing and Development Department to be - well, a woman, first of all, because Leslie can be a man's name too, but moreover, he isn't expecting Leslie Knope to be a pretty blonde woman, diminutive and adorable but also tired-looking and almost a bit melancholy. There's a sadness to her that he recognizes, one brought on by sitting too long at a desk beneath flourescent lights, and as he looks over the contents of her office - the photo of Hillary Clinton beside the little Indiana state flag in a pencil holder and the half-eaten cobb salad poking out of the wastebasket - he immediately realizes: this is not a woman who intended to end up in the Pawnee Housing and Development Department. 

"I'm Michael Bluth," he says, extending a hand, and her handshake is firmer than he expected it to be.

"Leslie Knope," she says shortly. "Please, have a seat."

Michael puts his dossiers on her desk and sits.

This is the first town in Indiana on his list. He has contacts in Bloomington, and he knows Muncie is a growing market. But as he drove through the town that morning, he found himself thinking that Pawnee might be a great place to start, to establish a base, maybe start develop a couple subdivisions before moving on to the bigger cities.

He opens his mouth, but before he can speak, Leslie Knope is interrupting him and just barging ahead.

"I've got to be honest," she says. "I looked up your company on the internet and I'm not sure that this is the type of business we're comfortable allowing to build in our city. Your stock rating isn't great right now-"

"It's 'Risky,'" Michael says, "which isn't bad."

"- and I read something about treason charges and building houses in Iraq?"

"That's a long story, but - my dad did that, it wasn't me, and he was set up. I'm in charge of the company now, Ms. Knope."

"I understand, Mr. Bluth."

She pauses and he takes advantage of the silence to open one of the folders on the desk. "And in fact, I do have a five-stage business model for a potential Pawnee subdivision, which we're calling Sudden Valley."

"Sudden Valley?"

"That's negotiable." Michael turns the page. "It'd be a while before we'd even break ground, it's primarily business and attracting investors at this point."

Leslie Knope sighs and leans back in her chair. "Look," she says. "To be honest, I'm not even the person you should be talking to right now. If you want a permit to build, you're going to have to go straight to City Council..." Her voice trails off. "Sorry. It's just that there's honestly nothing else I can do."

Of course there isn't, Michael thinks. "No, it's fine. Don't worry about it. You know, I actually have a meeting with a guy in Eagleton this afternoon. I don't know if you know anything about their business community -"

"Eagleton?" Leslie cringes visibly. "No, you don't want to go to Eagleton. No. Absolutely not. It's a dump. It's a complete suck-fest and everyone there is gross and depressing. Hang on a minute. I can get you on the phone with Mark Brendanawicz in City Planning, and he can hopefully send you in the right direction." She picks up the phone and dials an extension, and Michael smiles.

 

+

 

Leslie waits all evening for the Parks Department to call her back.

When she finally gets the call from the sleepy-sounding assistant, she snaps back into action. She has so much studying to do.

 

+

 

Three days later, Michael is picking up groceries in the early evening when he spots, across the produce aisle, a spate of familiar blonde hair. The head with the blonde hair on it turns around and yes, of course, it's Leslie Knope from the Housing Department, pushing a cart with a few cans of soup and a bottle of chocolate syrup. She hasn't noticed him yet, but their carts are on a collision course, and when they finally do meet at the end of the cucumber display, Michael says, "Leslie Knope. It's good to see you again." Formal. Nice.

He can see the confusion flicker across her face before it registers to her who, exactly, he is. "Mr. Bluth!" She smiles politely. "How did your meeting with Brendanawicz go?"

"Really well," Michael says truthfully. "I don't want to jump the gun here, but I think we might actually be a go. I've been looking for places to stay, actually, but the apartment situation is tough..."

"It's mostly students and young single kids," Leslie nods. "We don't really have any condos or apartments for adults here. Not that it matters to me, I own my home, but still. You should do something about that."

Michael nods. "That's actually in our phase-three plan," he says. "Also, now that I have you here, I was wondering - is there a single good restaurant in this town? I've only tried a couple places, but it's mostly been weird corn-based food..."

"Well, you've gotta go to JJ's," Leslie says as her eyes light up. "Oh my god. Have you not been there yet?"

"No, why? What's good there?"

"The waffles are amazing, and their chicken is really really good," she says excitedly. "Come on. Have you had dinner yet?"

"No-"

"Then you've got to come with me." She grins, and Michael considers the offer.

She's a very, very pretty woman, all butter-blonde hair and that chipper Midwestern countenance and he'd be a fool to turn down a dinner invitation with a pretty woman who's just being nice. George Michael will be fine, doing homework at the Pawnee Suites Inn for another hour or so.

It's hardly a question. Of course he'll go to dinner with Leslie Knope.

 

+

 

The job interview comes and goes without a hitch. She gets the job, of course, because she personally tracks down Ron Swanson after hours (she has a friend at the DMV pull his driver's license photo and lurks in the parking lot until she spots the luxuriously mustachioed man darting out to his car one evening), and he looks at her hard and says, "You are exactly the kind of hard employee I need."

Leslie wants to celebrate that night, and she finds herself calling Michael Bluth. She hasn't spoken to him in a few days, and when he picks up on the second ring, his voice is a little hoarse but also eager.

"Well," she says. "I'm afraid I can't be helpful to you. Anymore. Like, with your subdivision." Yeesh. What an opener.

"Why?" he asks, and Leslie grins a little, just from the sheer excitement of it.

"I'm leaving HUD. I got a better job working for the Parks Department."

"That's fantastic!" he exclaims, and it sounds like he means it. "That is just fantastic. We should celebrate. You wanna go for ice cream?"

Leslie considers it. "How about dinner first?" she asks. "Dinner, then ice cream. Or maybe ice cream, then dinner. Let's live a little. Ice cream, then dinner."

It's not that she's necessarily _interested_ in Michael. For god's sake, she just met him, they're practically strangers. But she has a good feeling about him. She likes to surround herself with good people, and Michael Bluth seems like a good guy. At dinner several days before, he had hardly touched on his past in conversation - a widower, single father, took over the family business when his father was arrested, came to Pawnee looking for a fresh start - but it intrigued Leslie nonetheless. She just wants to know more about him. She's interested in him.

Okay, ugh, fine, she's _interested_ in him. But whatever! That's her prerogative! It's been like two years since that thing with Mark, and every guy she's been on a date with since then has been a bust. So to Leslie, Michael Bluth is looking really good right now.

 

+

 

At dinner (post-ice cream) they toast her new job and his new life in Pawnee and new beginnings for all, and there's almost a voracious mutual curiousity between both, the kind that comes between people who are new to each other with boundless territory to explore. And the territory they settle on first is their mothers.

Leslie brings it up first, a roll of the eyes when she mentions that her mother also works in government. "Everyone thinks she got me the job, which completely isn't true," she says, and Michael can tell that the idea truly does upset her. "It's not that I don't love her. She's my mom, she's a really powerful government woman. But it's just... she's a hardass, you know?"

"God, do I," Michael says. "At least she's not a mean alcoholic, though."

"No, she's just mean," Leslie says. "And it's like, I get it, she wanted to prepare me for the real world, but would it kill her to say 'Good job' or 'I'm proud of you' once in a while, you know?"

Michael nods, and he does know. "Tell me about it," he says. "My mother - God, she's a pain in the ass. My entire family is."

Leslie cocks her head. "Tell me about them!" She puts down her fork and fold her hands in front of her. "Come on. Tell me. They can't be that bad."

They could. That's the thing. And Michael's deepest fear at this very moment is that even though he's three thousand and change miles away from that house full of lunatics in Orange County, they'll still ruin his chances with this woman, who he's not even sure he has a chance with in the first place.

But Leslie's smile is encouraging, and he's had a glass and a half of wine, and so he takes a deep breath and lays it all out without stopping. His siblings, so much like Frank Baum characters - one without a brain, one without a heart, one without a hand. The way his parents kept them all at arm's length, played them against each other for sport and politics, and used a one-armed man to teach them common sense. He tells her an abridged version of the whole damn story, sprawling out across the burnt-brown landscape of southern California, encompassing all of the houses and apartments and prisons and yachts, and when he finishes, he entirely expects Leslie to stand up from the table and back away at double speed.

But instead, she shakes her head, smiling, and simply says, "I guess I should stop complaining, huh?"

 

+

 

The first time they sleep together, it is not good. Too much awkward fumbling and sweaty hands and it all makes Michael feel very young again, like being back in that damn golf cart with Sally Sitwell.

The second time, it's very good, better than good, it's extraordinary, and as Michael watches Leslie get lost in the moment it's miraculous, her lack of self-consciousness and her beauty and that damn golden hair. 

It's the first time since Tracy, he thinks, that he's felt so strongly about a woman and then been able to have her, not have anything in the way. He asks this straight off the bat, the first night - "You're sure there isn't a jealous boyfriend hiding somewhere? No ex-husbands in the picture?"

"No boyfriend, no ex-husband," she smiles. "No current husbands, either."

"Good," he says, his voice low and throaty, as he goes for the first button on her blouse, and there's the start of a laugh that never quite finishes.

The second time is the start of something real.

 

+

 

**SUMMER 2006**

Leslie cuts her hair in the summer, and it's shorter and lighter, a bob that falls in loose curls around her chin. 

It suits her now. She's happier in the Parks Department than she ever was in Housing. It's more work than her previous position, and she couldn't be more thrilled. She sleeps less. She relishes the challenges. Ron Swanson does nothing, and she takes on nearly all of his obligations, but somehow it doesn't bother her at all. She knows she can accomplish more than he can in half the time, so she takes his meetings and it isn't an imposition at all, it just feels more like real power.

She likes the moments when she's out in the city the most, though. Going to the parks, talking to residents, taking informal surveys and polls. She watches kids play at the public pool and on the swings at Ramsett Park and it finally feels _right_ to her, like she's finally on the verge of making a difference.

For the first time since college, she's filled with real, absolute hope again.

 

+

 

George Michael gets a job at the movie theater, selling Sweetums snack bars and extra-large popcorn. He takes up with a girl named Millicent Gergich, a rising senior at Pawnee High just like himself, and Michael doesn't care for her, but there's not much he can say. He hardly talks to his son anymore. They go about their business separately, parallel lines that occasionally meet across the dinner table.

Michael briefly thinks of California and clay adobe roofs baking under the sun like a kiln, and he feels the slightest ache for the beach when he's ass-deep in files and statistics and plans for the new Newport Falls subdivision. But after work, when he meets Leslie, the ache vanishes and she is all. Wiser men have called this the honeymoon phase. Michael calls it "falling for Leslie Knope."

 

+

 

**FALL 2006**

Autumn is a reckoning. 

It arrives slowly at first, a gentle chill in the air and the sky getting darker a little earlier every night, and then boom, it's there, with fewer kids in the parks and fewer events to distract Leslie. It's time for her to get down to business and do what she transferred departments to do: make a change.

But it turns out that change comes more slowly than she anticipated. And then her immediate subordinate quits her job to get married, and it falls to Leslie to hire a replacement. 

It's harder than she had anticipated. She tries to give everyone a fair shot, and sometimes she wants to hire them all but more often she is disappointed by the applicants.

Then, at the eleventh hour, just as she is about to extend an offer to Bart Solomon from the fourth floor, a scrawny young man in an expertly-tailored suit walks in to hand-deliver his resume (which smells of Drakkar Noir). 

"My wife and I just moved to town," he says in a surprisingly strong southern drawl. "She got a job offer from the hospital here, so..."

Leslie glances at his resume. He studied marketing at Northeastern University. He's volunteered for mayoral campaigns in South Carolina and is proficient in Word, Excel, and Microsoft Powerpoint. He's immediately more qualified than any of the previous candidates and gives a great interview.

She hires Tom Haverford on the spot.

 

+

 

Somehow - miraculously, he thinks - it's fall before his family comes calling. Literally calling. There's a message on his voicemail after work one day, and he doesn't recognize the number at first, but when he listens to it, it's obvious who it was.

"Michael, you've got to come back. Things are a fucking wreck here. You want to hear us say that we need you? Fine. We need you to come back. The prosecutors are on our asses all the time and nobody knows what to do with Buster and the banana stand got thrown into the ocean again and Gob - look, just call me back, okay? It's Lindsay. By the way."

Michael stares at the phone as he tries to form the words. _The last time I saw you, you found out we weren't blood related, then you came onto me. Don't you have a husband still? Can't you bleed his family dry for a few years? Why are you calling me? How did you find this number? Go to hell. I'll be there in three days._

In the end, he deletes the message. That night, he walks into the living room of his small apartment and sees George Michael watching television idly.

"Hey Dad," he says, motioning with the remote. "Is that Uncle Tobias?"

It is Tobias, and he's somehow landed a role on a CBS crime drama, playing one of the white-coated men in the forensics laboratory. Michael makes a little coughing noise in his throat and excuses himself to get a glass of water.

(Had he stayed a little longer to watch the episode's credits, he'd maybe have spotted another familiar name among them when "ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: MAEBY FUNKE" flashed across the screen, and deduced that perhaps his niece had taken over his role of being the only member of their family with a solid job. But maybe he wouldn't have. Those credits are so often smushed to the bottom or the side of the screen while yet another ad for _How I Met Your Mother_ plays in full screen. Perhaps he wouldn't have noticed at all.)

 

+

 

Leslie regrets hiring Tom almost immediately. 

He has no work ethic, he spends all day shopping online for new hats, he relishes his job if only for the superficial perks. Ron loves him, which frustrates Leslie even more. She often feels that she's the only one doing any kind of work in her entire department. But on her worst days, she reminds herself that she's doing great work, serving her community, and she asks herself What Would Nancy Pelosi Do, and smiles and soldiers on.

Things with Michael seem to be getting more and more serious. It's not like she's a pro at these things - more of an educated amateur, if anything; her track record of serious relationships exists but leaves a bit to be desired - but she begins to suspect that they're in it for the long haul (the long haul being at least a couple years). Not that she minds. Michael is a good guy. He's dependable and responsible and when he says he's going to do something or be somewhere, he follows through. Work matters to him. _Doing something_ matters to him, and though he works in the private sector rather than the public, Leslie has never felt so connected to anyone. Work is important. He gets that.

Also, yeah, he's really really handsome. That helps too, fine.

 

+

 

"You know," Michael says, pushing a piece of her blonde hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear, "you're a really remarkable woman."

As he kisses her he can feel her smile against his lips.

 

+

 

That was the beginning. Now for the end. (Because truly, who wants to read about happy people in a happy relationship? Perhaps it has its appeal at first, but in the end, the misery wins out. It always does. Great stories are borne not out of happiness, but out of suffering.)

So here we are.

 

+

 

**FALL 2008**

Things get worse before they get better. This is what Michael tells himself.

The economy is in shambles. Half of the Newport Falls houses are either in foreclosure or about to be. The Bluth Company is deep in debt and digging itself deeper every day. His mother's trial is the subject of incessant news coverage. They've just broken ground on a new complex of condos and it looks as if they may have to abandon the project. Leslie is practically a stranger.

He had a moment, at Christmastime the previous year, where he truly thought he might marry her. He had watched her light the city tree and seen the snow falling lightly onto her shoulders and thought to himself that this is it, this is the moment where you just _know._ He just knew, and if he'd had a ring on him he would have proposed right then.

Thank God he hadn't.

It's not that she's changed so much as that they see much less of each other. He works eighteen-hour days, trying to salvage what little is left of his family's company. She - he doesn't know what she does at work anymore. Takes meetings, he supposes, and apparently she's hired a new intern this fall, a college girl who Leslie describes as a sweet but incorrigible pain in the ass. They spend haphazard nights in the attic of Michael's new residence, one of the foreclosure houses in Newport Falls which the company is using as a model now, and the sex used to be fantastic, but now it's tepid and distracted. 

George Michael goes to UC Irvine and Michael calls him once a week to find out how his grades are, and that's about it.

 

+

 

Things always get better. This is what Leslie tells herself.

The election is all that matters at the moment. Her lifelong love of politics goes into hyperdrive, and she's out every weekend, registering voters and putting up yard signs. The entire country is swept up in the grand, theatrical nature of it all, and Leslie goes right along with it. Even her new intern, a sullen, sarcastic girl with a haunting stare, shows up to work with an Obama button on her bag and Leslie gives her a hug right there, just for participating.

(Ron stays in his office and asks that no one bother him with any of this political bullshit, then explains his one-man, one-job political policy again. Leslie shrugs it off. She's gotten used to his peculiarities by now.)

On election night, Michael has to work late, and Leslie goes with a group from City Hall to a bar after work, where they watch the electoral votes roll in on CNN and get thoroughly, pleasantly wasted on 44-cent beers (celebrating the 44th president-to-be, of course). Leslie is perched on a stool at the bar beside Mark when Anderson Cooper projects that California was going to go for Obama, and in the ensuing chaos of yelling and high-fiving and general revelry, they're suddenly kissing.

Oh.

Leslie pulls away and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "That's a mistake," she says.

Mark looks at her oddly. "Is it?" he asks.

"Yeh," she says. "I have a boyfriend."

"Where is he?" asks Mark, and fuck it, that's a really good point, and all of a sudden - blame it on Barack Obama or the 44-cent beers - she really wants to continue making out with Mark Brendanawicz.

 

+

 

Their last fight happens on the day that the Bluth Company files for bankruptcy, which would have been enough to make it one of the worst days of Michael's life on its own.

It was an innocuous argument at the start. Neither would remember the impetus, just that it eventually devolved into full-throated yelling, no holds barred.

"Where have I been?" Michael asks incredulously. "I've been trying to do my _job_ , Leslie. Jesus fucking Christ."

"Yeah, well, apparently you suck at it," she fires back.

It means nothing to tell someone who hates their job that they're bad at it. But to someone whose entire life and world revolves around work - it's unforgivable.

Leslie knows this. Leslie knows better than anyone what it means to truly be married to the job.

When she leaves the model house that night, she doesn't look back.

 

+

 

Michael leaves for California the next day. He packs what few possessions he's accrued into the car, locks the model home, and starts driving. His family needs him, after all. He's amazed they've managed to survive on their own thus far.

 

+

 

There's a hole in the ground in Pawnee, in the lot where the Bluth Company was set to build an apartment complex. Soon a man will come along and tumble down into that hole, and it will set off another chain reaction of events, each bigger and better and happier than the last - resulting in a surprise wedding, a horse funeral, a harvest festival, a hundred news articles, and it will all swirl around Leslie. 

She doesn't know this now. She knows that when men in the future ask about her last serious relationship, she'll tell them about a man from California with a dysfunctional family who came to Pawnee in search of change. Or perhaps she won't. Maybe she'll just shrug it off with an enigmatic "Stuff happens."

Probably not, though. After all, she's still Leslie Knope.

 

_fin._


End file.
